Flavia Nambooze: Indonesia is So Fascinating!

Published: 13 Feb 2018

Written by Flavia Nambooze, Darmasiswa Scholarship participant at President University.

I would like to take this opportunity to fill you all in about my travel arrival impression in Indonesia. Did I know about the country? Oh yes, of course! Google, Al-Jazeera (the Jazeera Satellite Channel) and CNN that I intriguingly got inspired with the Indonesian culture and its deep rooted philosophy.

The hospitality aspect really challenged my mental model, the way I was taken up by surprise with a few country people I met at the arrivals Terminal 2D, it was like I was meeting them the second time. The cultural greetings with a respect good evening ‘mum’ and the directions to finding minimart to wait for my pick-up service, I felt like I was safe. Can you imagine one Gentleman who was dressed in the guards’ uniform made a phone call on my behalf to communicate about my arrival so I am picked up?!.

Mr. Ginanjar, the driver offered me with a bottle of water after I had settled in the car; a sign of welcome home in Africa. We were driving towards the Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel, Jakarta.

When the short hand of the clock clicked 6:00 pm it was like 2:00 pm in Uganda; East Africa, my minds ran faster back home and I guessed that I was mind mapping. The vehicles (Grab and Uber) were busy on the move and people I saw were hurriedly on the move as well, this to me drew a sense of time and its effects. For the Darmasiswa orientation ushers/administrators upon my arrival at the hotel is another experience.

The formal debriefing with the university administrators was culturally fascinating. The orientation on campus about students’ housing allowed me associate with many particularly the orientation team and my student buddies; I liked and still like the productive conversations and the collective intelligence. The care I got without my baggage was parental.

The fact is that I felt like a new born as I observed how different parts of the systems in Indonesia work just at the Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport with cultural marts hanging on the walls, at the hotel and at the University.

Woow!! Learning Bahasa Indonesia is culturally fascinating sounding a character, and the way you roll it on your tongue in Bahasa is amazing. My first words were; Terima kasih (literally meaning thank you), Selamat Sore (late afternoon), Selamat Datang (Welcome), and introducing myself and why am here as: “Nama ku Flavia Nambooze, aku dari Uganda, East Africa, aku disini untuk belajar bahasa Indonesia”. Having learnt this on my second day I got inspired to learn more other words, and I consistently started using them to communicate to my home people and my roommates.

I definitely expect to learn more about culture and how its philosophy impacts people’s way of thinking and doing things differently, importantly I will also like to further enroll for Master Degree in Indonesia. I expect to interact with different people here for a self-generating transformation and or innovate for a community project as a pay back to the Indonesian government sponsoring the Darmasiswa program.